Drop annotations support?

[Ocramius]

I just skimmed through the codebase of ZF2 and couldn't find scenarios where the "base" annotation parser of zend-code is used in it, except for zend-di. We could probably get rid of the entire Zend\Code\Annotation namespace.

While I realize that coming from me it sounds like I'm suggesting for people to just use doctrine/annotations, this part of the codebase really lies unused, and is a relatively complex layer that just proxies through to doctrine/annotations, in fact.

I propose deprecating it (probably 4.0) and dropping support for it in the subsequent major version. This allows us to also get rid of the zendframework/zend-eventmanager dependency inside zend-code.

[stof]

@Ocramius why waiting a major version to deprecate it ? A deprecation can happen in a minor version (deprecating is not a BC break when done properly. The BC break would be the removal)

[Ocramius]

@stof 3.0 is gonna happen real soon ( #29 ), and this sort of decision isn't something I can take on my own anyway.

[weierophinney]

@Ocramius I think we use Zend\Code\Annotation in zend-form as well; can you check?

In terms of deprecation, we could add the deprecation to the 3.0 release of zend-code, as far as I'm concerned.

Also, one question, what did you mean by this?

This allows us to also get rid of the zendframework/zend-eventmanager dependency inside ZF2.

That has never been proposed…

[Ocramius]

@weierophinney zendframework/zend-eventmanager is required only due to how the annotation manager works: removing annotation support means that no event manager is needed either

[Ocramius]

@Ocramius I think we use Zend\Code\Annotation in zend-form as well; can you check?

Yes, but by default it just uses doctrine annotations

[weierophinney]

The clarification is s/ZF2/zend-code/ in your original statement. :)

Regarding zend-form, we should make a note to drop support for Zend\Code\Annotation for the next major release of that component, which will make your suggestion possible.

[lisachenko]

Maybe we could start with making zendframework/zend-eventmanager optional dependency? And move it to the suggest section only for annotation, because event manager is used only for annotation parser and this is very rare case.

This will drop explicit zendframework/zend-eventmanager dependency. It could be easily fixed on project level via require.

[lisachenko]

@Ocramius @weierophinney what do you think about my previous question about making optional dependency with possible removing in the next major?

[Ocramius]

@lisachenko making the dependency optional is already a BC break, so I'd just go with a new major

[lisachenko]

making the dependency optional is already a BC break, so I'd just go with a new major

@Ocramius it's perfectly ok for me 👍

Also PHP strict types are welcome for new major ) So, my huge vote to make this library de facto standard for code generation